Jeff Bezos' Next Challenge For Amazon Is To Make It Easier For You To Pay For Stuff

CEO Jeff Bezos is lighting a fire under Amazon's team to make
payments one of its top areas of focus and investment, according to Re/Code's Jason Del
Ray.

“Jeff’s told us it’s something we need to be successful in, and
should be successful in,” Tom Taylor, head of payments at Amazon,
told Re/Code. “The pressure I feel from Jeff is, ‘Go
faster.’”

Amazon, which has about 224 million credit cards on file,
launched Login and Pay With Amazon last fall, which enables
e-commerce sites to allow their customers to sign into their
Amazon accounts to access their credit card and shipping
information, saving them the hassle of entering all that info
again. Since its launch, the product has gotten thousands of
sites on board, but with only a few big names — like the inflight
Internet service Gogo — making the list.

However, because the feature is such a low-friction method
of payment and because Amazon doesn't get any information from
partner sites about which products customers purchase, which
could have otherwise deterred sites wary of giving Amazon
valuable data, Amazon will likely start signing on more sites as
e-commerce and mobile commerce continue to grow
as a percentage of retail shopping.

The company also already has a leg-up when it comes to
making a mobile payments app, because a majority of its userbase
already use Amazon on their phones (29% use mobile exclusively). However, Taylor
alluded to Re/Code that Amazon won't be it won't be creating
the sort of mobile wallet that lets users pay for anything,
anywhere using their phones any time soon. Instead, it will be
looking for specific scenarios, like when people have to pay for
street parking, that it thinks are really frustrating for
people.